|
Some years ago, I was
proceeding from Runcorn to Manchester, in one of the passage-boats which
ply upon the Duke of Bridgewater’s canal. There could not be less than a
hundred passengers, and they were of as motley a description as the
imagination of a man could conceive even in a dream. The boats exactly
resemble a long, low, flat-roofed wooden house; but sufficiently lofty for
a middle sized person to stand erect between the floor and the roof, or
rather the deck. At one end sat about a dozen Primitive Methodists,
alternately reading passages of Scripture, or bursting forth, at the
extreme pitch of their voice, into a squall of music, singing hymn upon
hymn, till my very ears ached, and the timbers of the boat might have
started. Near them sat a number of young, rosy checked Welshmen, staring
at the vocalists with a look of wondering vacancy, that the goats on their
own mountains could not have surpassed. There were, also, manufacturers’
wives and children returning from a seven days’ visit to Runcorn, for the
benefit of a salt water dip in the Mersey; and six or eight prim, sober,
sleek, silent, well dressed Quakers; with a more than sprinkling of the
boys of the Emerald Isle. The loud laugh of one of them was ever and anon
heard above the shrill music of the Ranters. He was about five feet seven
inches high, and exceedingly strong and well made. He wore an old
greatcoat, of a yellowish blanket colour, and a hat, the crown of which
had fallen in with service, and its brim was equally turned up before and
behind, and on both sides. His feet were thrust into a pair of brogues of
true Irish manufacture, which, with a pair of coarse blue worsted
stockings and corduroy inexpressibles, completed his outward man. He
carried an apparently empty sack under his arm, and was surrounded by
about a dozen of his countrymen, who seemed to regard him as an oracle,
heartily echoing back his boisterous laughter, and exclaiming—"Well done,
Mister M’Carthy!—faith and it’s you that’s your mother’s own son, at my
rate."
O’Connell had sailed from
Liverpool on the previous day, and his countrymen were discussing his
political merits.
"Why, bad luck to ye,"
exclaimed our hero with the great coat, in answer to one who had held
forth in praise of the counsellor; "and is it you, Mick Behan, that says
every man in Ireland should pay the O’Connell rint?—but I’ll tell you a
bit of a parable, as father O’Shee says, and a parable too, of my own
natural mother’s making. ‘Larry,’ says she to me, ‘Larry M’Carthy, don’t
be after planting those big potatoes for seed; ‘for they’ve a hole in
their heart a little Christian might slape in!’"
"You’re no better than a
Sassenach, Larry," interrupted the aforesaid Mick; "can’t you spake your
maneing like a man if you have any maneing at all, at all."
This was like to have ended
in an Irish row in reality—though the majority evidently sided with Mister
Larry M’Carthy, not because they agreed with him in opinion, but because,
as afterwards appeared, he was their master or employer. The disputants
paused for a moment, and a loud groan, as if from one in great bodily
pain, mingled with the wailings of a woman, was heard from the farther
corner of the boat. Larry turned round, to use his own expression, "like a
flash of lightning," and the next moment he stood by the side of the
sufferer, who was a tall, bony looking figure; but save the skin that
covered them, there was little of his mortal man but the bones left. It
was only necessary to look on his features, wasted as they were, to tell
that he too, was an Irish man. A young wife sat beside him, whose
countenance resembled beauty personifying sorrow; she had a child at her
breast, and two others, the eldest not more than five years of age, stood
by her knee. Larry looked upon the group, and his heart was touched.
"Och! and what may be
ailing ye, countryman?" said he; "sure and ye wouldn’t be after dying
among friends, would ye?"
"Ohon! and is it a friend
that ye would be asking after my own Patrick?" replied the poor wife;
"sure then and he is ill, and we’re all ill togidder; and it is six
blessed months since he earned the bridth of tinpinny. Oh! blackness on
the day that the rheumatis came on him—"
"Sure now and is that all,"
interrupted Larry; "and belike the doctors have been chating you; for I
tell you honey, and you too, Patrick, those ‘natomy chaps know no more
about the rheumatis than holy Solomon knew about stame boats. But belike
I’m the lad that disn’t know neither; but, maybe your chating yoursilf if
ye think so. I’ll tell ye what it is; the rheumatis is a wandering wind
between the flesh and the bone; and, more than that, there is no way to
cure it, but to squaze it out at the ends of the fingers or toes."
"Oh! my childer’s sorrow on
it thin!" replied the suffering man’s wife; "but more and above the
rheumatis, Patrick got his leg broke last Fibruary—"
"Ay, splintered honey,"
added the husband; "and the doctors, bad luck be wid them, can’t make
nothing on’t, and I am now going to the great Salford bone doctor."
"And maybe, he won’t be
curing the bit bone without the money," said Larry, with an expression of
sympathy.
The sufferer shook his
head, and was silent; his wife burst into tears,
"I will work, I will beg, I
will die for my Patrick," she exclaimed, and pressed the child closer to
her breast.
"Ye had better be barring
the dying, honey," returned Larry; "and wouldn’t a raffle think ye, among
friends, be more gintale than begging among strangers?"
"Obon! and is it friends
you say?" replied she.
"Yes sure, and it is
friends that I say," answered Larry, "and a raffle is what no
gentleman need be ashamed on."
The boat at this moment
stopped opposite an inn at the side of the canal, Larry borrowed a quart
measure from the skipper, and sprang ashore. In a few minutes he returned
with a quantity of rum, and handing it first to the wife, and then to her
lame husband, said—"Come, warm up thy ould bones with a drop of the cratur.’
He called the rest of his countrymen around him, and handed the liquor to
each. When gathered together, there might be about sixteen or eighteen of
them in all.
"Ar rah
now, and these are all my men," said Mister Larry M’Carthy, with a look of
comical consequence, to his infirm countryman; "and where would you be
finding better? We are gone up to a bit of work in Lancashire; for the
Inglish are no better than born childer at our work; [Larry and his
countrymen were all navigators, as they are called, or rather
excavators, employed in digging canals, railways, docks, &c.] and,"
raising the liquor to his head, he added, "here’s the Holy Virgin be with
us, countryman, and better luck to your bad leg; and should it ever be
mended at all—though you mayn’t be good for much at hood work iny
more, you have still a stout bone for a barrow—and you won’t be
forgetting to ask for Larry M’Carthy. And now, boys," continued he,
turning to his workmen, "here is this poor man, and more than this, I’m
saying, our own lawful countryman, with the rheumatis and a broken leg,
and his wife too, as you see, and those three little cherubims, all
starving, to be sure, and he going to the doctor’s without a penny! Sure
you won’t disgrace ould Ireland—just look at the childer—and I say that a
raffle is the gintale way of doing the thing."
So saying, he thrust his
hand into his pocket, and pulled out a small canvass bag well filled with
silver, and tied round the mouth with a strong cord. He took off his
indescribable brown hat; he threw in a piece or two of silver, and went
round, shaking it among his countrymen. Each took out a bag similar to
Larry’s, and threw his mite into the hat. He then, without counting them,
emptied its contents into the lap of the poor woman; and I should think,
from their appearance, they must have amounted to thirty or forty
shillings. She burst into tears. The lame man grasped his hand, and
endeavoured to thank him,
"Don’t be after spakeing,"
said Larry; "did you think we warn’t Christians?"
Such was the Irish raffle.
Larry instantly resumed his jokes, his jests, and his arguments; but I
could do nothing during the rest of the passage, but think of the good
Samaritan, and admire Mister Larry M’Carthy.
In the September of 1834, I
was wandering by the side of a country churchyard, situated near the banks
of the Tyne. The sun had gone down, and the twilight was falling grey upon
the graves. I saw a poor looking man, whose garments fluttered in tatters
with the evening breeze, and who, by his appearance, seemed to be an Irish
reaper, rise from among the tombs. He repeatedly drew the sleeve of his
coat across his eyes, and I could hear him sobbing heavily, as though his
heart would burst. As we approached each other, I discovered that he was
my old canal boat companion, the then merry and kind hearted Larry
M’Carthy; but no more like the Larry I had then seen him, than a funeral
to a bridal.
His frame was wasted to a
skeleton, and hunger and misery glistened in his eyes together.
"Ha!" said I, accosting
him, "is it possible that sorrow can have laid its heavy hand upon the
light heart of Larry M’Carthy?"
"Sure," said he, drying away the
tears that ran down his sun and want worn cheeks, "and it is true, and too
true, and heavy is the hand, sure enough; but not so heavy as it should
be, or it would be weighing me into that grave." He pointed to the grave I
had seen him leave, and added,
"But how do you know me sir—and who tould ye my name—as I don’t know
yours?—for sure, and mine is Larry M’Carthy, as my father and mother, and
his riverence, wid my natural sponsors to boot, all, every one of thim,
say and affirm."
I reminded him of the canal
boat and the raffle, and inquired the cause of his distress, and his visit
to the grave.
"Arrah, master," said he,
"and you touch a sore place when you ask me to tell it. Perhaps you don’t
know—for how should you—that not long after the time you spake of in the
canal boat, I came down to what they call the Borders here, to a bit of
navigating work that was to be a long job. I lodged wid a widow—a dacent
ould woman, that had a daughter they called Mary—and och! you may be
thinking that ever Mary had an equal, but it’s wrong that ye are if ye
think so. Her eyes were like drops of dew upon the shamrock; and although
she was not Irish but Scotch, it was all one; for ye know the Scotch and
Irish are one man’s childer. But at iny rate, she had a true Irish heart;
and but for the sae or the channel, as they call it, she would have been
Irish as well as me. The more I saw of Mary, I loved her the more—better
than a bird loves the green tree. She loved me too, and we were married.
The ould woman died a few weeks before Mary presented me with two little
Larrys. I might have called them both Larry; for they were as like each
other as your two eyes, and both of them as like me too, as any two stars
in the blessed firmament are like each other, where nobody can see a
difference.
Mary made the best wife in Christendom; and when our
little cherubs began to run about our knees, and to lisp and spake to us,
a thousand times have I clasped Mary to my breast, and blessed her as
though my heart would burst with joy. ‘Sure,’ I used to say, ‘what would
my own mother have said, had her ould eyes been witness to the happiness
of her son, Larry M’Carthy?"
"But often the thought came
staleing over me that my happiness was too like a drame to last long; and
sure and it was a drame, and a short one too. A cruel, mortal fever came
to the village, and who should it seize upon but my little darlints. It
was hard to see them dying together, and my Mary wept her bright eyes
blind over them. But bad luck was upon me. The ‘potecary tould us how our
lovely childer would die; and on the very day that he said so, the wife
that was dearer to me than ould Ireland to Saint Patrick, lay down on the
bed beside them—and och, sir! before another sun looked in at our window,
a dying mother lay between her dead childer. I wished that I might die
too; and within three days I followed my wife and my little ones together
to the same grave. It was this arm that lowered them into the cold
earth—into the narrow house—and sure it has been weak as a child’s since.
My strength was buried in their grave. I have wrought but little since;
for I cannot. I have no home now; and I take a light job anywhere when it
comes in my way. Every year, at reaping time, I visit their grave, and
bring with me a bit shamrock to place over it, and that it may be a mark
where to bury me, should I die here, as I hope I will."
Within ten days after this,
I beheld the body of the once lively and generous hearted Larry M’Carthy
consigned to the grave, by the side of his wife and children. |
